Connections review

Cj was kind enough to send over a copy of his latest DVD release called Connections. Cj has prior to this release also put out Third Eye in co-operation with Kenneth Nguyen and Peter Drastrup. As I've heard a lot about how much better this DVD should be from Cj himself, I was eager as a beast to see it with my own eyes.

Cj was kind enough to send over a copy of his latest DVD release called Connections. Cj has prior to this release also put out Third Eye in co-operation with Kenneth Nguyen and Peter Drastrup. As I've heard a lot about how much better this DVD should be from Cj himself, I was eager as a beast to see it with my own eyes.

Connections is without doubt several notches better than Thirdeye – a big climb up the ladder for Cj. In comparison with Thirdeye, which was an entirely Danish video, Connections (as the name hints) is more of an international release. I believe it is the first video done, that has profiles of both a skater from USA (Nick Uhas, USA), two from western Europe (Daniel Prell from Germany and Ricardo Lino from Portugal) and one from eastern Europe (Roman Moiseenkov, Russia). So this is truly an international release, but still with a Danish flavour.

When you first get the DVD in your hands and put it in your DVD player, you'll se that the cover design and DVD menu are closely related in design. Both are sweet and simple (hey – I designed the cover – so you better think the same about it! :)). Unfortunately, the graphics from the menu and cover does not appear in the video – a common mistake, which can be found in most videos out (including my own latest release). It would have been so much cooler, if the graphics was a theme all the way around. I'm beeing picky here, since I have to tell something bad about it… it can't all be good ;)

Anyway – the video starts with a bunch of slams, whereafter killer tricks from later on in the video are shown. The quality of the skating is top notch and are both from Scandinavia as well as the rest of Europe and USA.

Hereafter, Daniel Prell's section is on. In my opinion, this is the best section of them all. He's got a sick style, goes big and tech – the section is cut clean and simple and the tricks are filmed well. The best editing and filming in the video. Good job!

Nick Uhas, the rail transfer king from San Diego USA, has a section that was only shot in 14 days. Taking this into consideration… Nick is one hell of a sick guy! I didn't fancy his style too much though – but that's just me… picky as always. The skating itself is sick!

Ricardo Lino is the most famous bum of Europe. He has a nice and easy skate style and loves to do long rails. He's not too technical and could skate with a little more speed – other than that, it's an alright section, but not a reason to buy the video for.

Roman Moiseenkov… Russian skater – what can I say more? I guess that kind of sums it up as I am sure you've all heard of the crazy Russians before.

The video has two random sections – one Scandinavian and one for everybody else. This Scandinavian random section is pretty much the only Danish about this video except from the real street competitions edit that is in the video itself.

I don't get why the video has two competition sections inside the video itself – and why they aren't in the bonus. They are both a good watch, so actually I shouldn't complain – just thought it a bit weird.

All in all, Cj has plugged in an video-editing upgrade card as he has evolved immensely as a video editor, although there is still a little way to go in order for him to be top notch.
In my opinion, the filming could have been better – I would have prefered better angles and more control over the cameras functions (manual instead of automatic). A lot of clips are over-saturated and made very dark – a shame to do with video clips filmed with Cj's Canon XM-2 camera. But again – I'm being picky as I have to say something bad about the video.

On top of the video itself, some nice bonus sections goes along with it – a park section, more Danish random skating, and a nice Martin Gade profile. Also be sure to check out the ads section, that has a toxboe.net ad in it! :-) The secret section is pretty damn sweet as well.

Written by Anders Toxboe on April 27, 2005

1 Comment

1

ludde askldj

1 Apr, 2008

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